


The Princess and the Bandit

by terajk



Category: Aladdin (1992), Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon Disabled Character, Chromatic Character, Collection: Purimgifts Extras, Crossover, Gen, People with disabilities being awesome, Pre-Canon, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-20
Updated: 2011-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:09:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terajk/pseuds/terajk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meeting the boy in the market wasn't the first time she'd snuck away from the palace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Princess and the Bandit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beckyh2112](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckyh2112/gifts).



A good princess would never listen to the servants' gossip, and certainly wouldn't be excited by it. But Jasmine is not a good princess.

"She's this little girl—must be no more than eleven years old—and she beats up huge, muscley guys like it's _nothing._ They call her the Blind Bandit."

"She's not really blind, though. It's just a gimmick."

"No, it isn't."

Jafar thinks it's all vulgar foolishness, of course. ("Awk! Vulgar foolishness!" says the little red parrot on his shoulder, his own personal yes-man.) But she doesn't pay attention to Jafar. Instead, she tells her lady-in-waiting that she'd like to practice her posture in the hallway. A princess must have excellent posture, after all.

*

She _is_ as helpless as her father thinks.

The problem isn't sneaking past the Dai Li agents the Earth King gave her father for guarding the palace—no one will miss a young woman dressed in bland colors, and, besides, she has more sandbending talent than they know. She's even planned her route to the docks, which she can see from her window. But when she thinks about leaving her room, her home, her world, her whole body freezes up and it takes a nuzzle from Rajah to get her moving again.

What would the Blind Bandit think of a princess who has everything she could want and yet is afraid to leave the palace? She'd point and laugh and probably beat her up, that's what. Jasmine cracks her knuckles, breathes out, and pulls her paid companion's shirt and pants from underneath her pillow. She has promised not to get them dirty.

"Do you have a ticket?" asks the man at the dock.

"Uh," says Jasmine.

"I can't let you on without a ticket, young lady."

Jasmine thinks—fast. "I'm...a chambermaid, sir." They have those on boats, don't they?

They do. "Hurry on, then," the man says, shoving her forward so hard she almost falls over. How rude. Doesn't he know she's a—? Oh, wait.

She can still feel the boat rocking back and forth even after she steps off it, and it takes all her strength not to kiss the ground. Instead, she tries to envelop herself in a safe swirl of it, but it's earth, not sand, so she can't. The Blind Bandit would never have this kind of problem, she bets.

Jasmine has to ask for directions to the auditorium—"I'm supposed to sweep the stage afterwards," she says—and when she finds the place, a man seats her in the very, very highest tier, behind two men so huge she can hardly see a thing. But she came all this way, so she cocks her head and peeks between them with one eye.

There are smells of food (and unwashed clothes) and shouting, and there is barely any space for her. Jasmine is used to people touching her as if their fingers would sully her, dressing her or bathing her or combing her hair. Being packed together like sweets in a box is new to her, and she likes it.

What she doesn't like is the wait. The announcer-guy (Xin Fu, she thinks his name is) keeps talking, and there are too many big, muscley guys. She didn't come to see big, muscley guys. Jasmine yawns, shakes herself awake. She's almost asleep when Xin Fu finally bellows: "And now, Earth Rumble's champion three years running, the Blind Bandit!"

The room explodes in cheers and whistles, but Jasmine hears only herself. "Go, Blind Bandit!" Then she remembers something she's heard the men around her say. "Kick his sorry _ass!"_

The men sitting near her turn to look, and for a second she's horrified. But then the Blind Bandit flourishes her arm...and is it pointing in Jasmine's direction? She clasps her hands together, holds them to her chest.

Even from this distance, she can tell that the Blind Bandit fights differently than the Dai Li who guard the palace. Her stances remind her of nothing so much as the poems her tutors make her recite day after day. They'd always bored her, with their talk of royal weddings and romance, but now, in this girl even younger than herself, she sees their beauty.

The big guy she's fighting doesn't, though. He aims a wave of earth in the Blind Bandit's direction, because he thinks that she is weak and helpless and all he understands is force. Jafar, for all his pretty words and fake niceness, is the same.

 _Kick his sorry ass,_ Jasmine thinks. She's making a fist so tight that her nails cut into her palm.

Although the Blind Bandit's movements are gorgeous, she doesn't need to do anything showy. She merely steps back, raises her hands, and shifts the earth-wave, like a wind's sudden change of direction. It's the guy's own force that knocks him out of the ring.

Jasmine is screaming now, stamping her feet. She is not a good princess.

When her father asks why her voice is hoarse, she'll tell him she has a cold. And when she meets Jafar and his stupid bird in the hallways or the palace meeting rooms, she won't lower her head, no matter the punishment. It's not knocking a huge guy out of a ring—the Blind Bandit would scoff, surely—but it's what she can do.

That, and come back next year.


End file.
